The present invention relates generally to the management of cattle in a feedlot for optimum beef quality and optimum return on investment to the producer and feedlot.
This invention relates more particularly to processes and systems for individual animal value-based management of cattle for the production of beef for human consumption by measuring, sorting and tracking animals individually and in groups to manage the diversity in individual animals for optimum efficiency and value.
A feedlot is a place where cattle producers, such as ranchers, send their cattle to promote their growth and improve their condition and characteristics before shipment to a meat packer for slaughter.
Feedlots generally care for thousands of head of cattle or other animals at once in various stages of growth. These animals come from a variety of sources with widely varying previous care and feeding performance history. Cattle within a feedlot are physically contained in cattle pens, each pen typically having a feed bunk to receive feed, a water source for drinking, and manually-operated gates to enter and exit the pens. A feedlot typically includes a hospital area where individual animals that are ill or otherwise in need of treatment can be medicated or otherwise treated and returned to their pens. It also includes a receiving area where cattle are contained upon their arrival at a feedlot, a processing area where cattle, shortly after their arrival, are tagged, weighed and given health care and growth promotant products, and shipping area where cattle are prepared for shipment to a packing plant for slaughter.
Ownership of particular cattle in a feedlot is defined by a unique lot number. The number of cattle in a lot may vary, and an owner may own a portion of a lot, a portion of multiple lots, or all of one or more lots. Each lot may occupy one or multiple pens.
Proper care for animals in a large feedlot is a complex and time-consuming task because of, for example, feeding, water supply, insect control, and individual or group treatment requirements. Treatments may include group treatments where various medications are added to the feed, or individual treatments that are applied topically, orally, by injection or by implantation to selected individual or groups of animals. Regular sorting of animals also occurs.
Movement of the animals individually and in groups may occur several times during the several month period each animal is kept in the feedlot due to the above-mentioned reasons and others. This movement of animals from their home pen to other pens, from a home pen to a treatment area and later return, and from several pens into a common pen, is necessary for the proper care and maintenance of the animals.
Feedlots have various charges assessed to owners for the care and maintenance of their animals. These charges are typically assessed by lot number at periodic intervals based on feedlot care and maintenance records, not on an individual animal basis. Examples of these are feed ration charges in dollars per ton, health care and growth promotion product charges, a daily yardage fee per head, and handling charges. For optimum accuracy of these records and charges, they would be kept on an individual animal basis, but this is not possible with current feedlot management systems.
Within the feeder cattle population, there is tremendous diversity in individual animal characteristics due to both genetic and environmental factors such as weight, frame size, muscling, fat content and deposition rate, breed type, rate of gain, feed efficiency, intramuscular fat (marbling), sex, age, health and drug treatments, nutrition and growth history, and other factors.
Ideally, the physical and growth characteristics of each animal should be known at every stage of its stay in the feedlot in order to determine when the animal should be slaughtered for optimum growth efficiency and value of the carcass based upon a carcass grading target and market conditions. However, this is not now possible, as a practical matter, in large feedlots, with existing feedlot management methods and systems.
This extreme diversity in the cattle population within a feedlot coupled with the need to produce a quality end product at the lowest possible cost for the maximum economic return to the feedlot and the producer, results in a need to be able to measure and track the physical and performance characteristics of each animal during its residence in the feedlot for optimum marketing date selection. This is something that heretofore has not been possible, as a practical matter.
Methods and systems used prior to this invention have been too inaccurate or have lacked the capability to identify and track characteristics of performance and charges on an individual animal basis. Additionally, they have been too labor intensive and too injurious to animals, and have required skill levels not readily available in feedlots.
The livestock industry has tried for years, with limited success, to improve the genetics of the cattle population to produce the types of animals that will yield a high percentage of lean meat and a low percentage of fat efficiently. However, until now there has been no effective way for large feedlots to measure and sort animals individually, keep accurate and complete records of live physical characteristics and charges for each animal, and to produce an economic end point determination for each animal using growth performance data. Nor has there been an effective way to match growth performance data to end product carcass data for each animal from slaughtering operations that would enable a correlation between carcass value and live animal performance and measured characteristics so as to help identify superior genetic types for future breeding and management purposes, and to identify management practices that will maximize the value of the arrival in the market.
The cattle growth and production industry comprises two major components, producers and feedlots with many grower-type operations in between. The cattle producers maintain cow herds. The herds produce calves that are raised and grown on pasture grazing land, much of which is unsuitable for cultivation. The calves are grown to a certain size, after which they are moved to a confined feedlot where they are fed grain and other products grown on tillable farmland, in a nutritionally balanced ration. Although feedlot sizes range from a one-time capacity of a few head to a capacity of over one hundred thousand head, the trend in North America is towards large feedlots in the ten thousand to one hundred thousand head capacity. These larger feedlots feed the majority of feedlot-fed cattle in North America intended for beef consumption.
The extremely diverse beef cattle population results in an extremely variable beef product for the consumer in terms of eating quality, fatness, tenderness, size of cuts and other factors. It has been a primary goal of the beef industry associations to improve the quality and uniformity of beef for the American consumer for many years. The 1991 Beef Quality Audit identified approximately $280 per head being wasted, of which more than $150.00 was excess fat. In order to improve the current beef product, it is first necessary that the current diverse cattle population be managed for optimum efficiency and desired carcass cut out quality and value for the consumer. Second, ultimately the genetic make up of the producer cow herd must be changed based on feed-back of data concerning the quality and quantity of lean meat yield from carcasses, live performance and the live physical data from individual animals. Such data can then be traced to the sire and dam of each animal in order to make breeding decisions about the types of animals to produce in the future.
While many methods of measurement and selection of cattle in feedlots have been tried, both visual and automated, none have been successful in accomplishing the desired end result. That end result is the ability to select a given animal for shipment at the optimum time, considering the animal""s condition, performance and market factors, the ability to grow the animal to its optimum individual potential of physical and economic performance, and the ability to record and preserve each animal""s performance history in the feedlot and carcass data from the packing plant for use in cultivating and managing current and future animals for meat production. The beef industry is extremely concerned with its decreasing market share relative to pork and poultry. Yet to date, it has been unable to devise a system or method to accomplish on a large scale what is needed to manage the current diversity of cattle to improve the beef product quality and uniformity fast enough to remain competitive in the race for the consumer dollar spent on meat.
In order for this problem to be solved, some method and system is needed for managing cattle in large feedlots which has the ability to identify and monitor key characteristics of individual animals and manage those individual animals to maximize their individual potential performance and edible meat value. Such system must further be able to collect, record and store such data by individual animal identification so that it is usable to improve future animals bred by the producer and managed by the feedlot.
While others have conceived or used apparatuses or methods intended to simplify or otherwise improve certain specified aspects of a feedlot operation, none have been known to address the broader need for a system and method for managing all aspects of the care, feeding, and marketing of cattle in a feedlot, on an individual animal basis if desired, from the time of their arrival to the time of their shipment for slaughter, for optimum feed and drug efficiency, animal health, animal performance, and profit to the feedlot producer.
For example Pratt U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,733,971, issued Mar. 29, 1988, U.S. Pat. No. 4,889,433, issued Dec. 26, 1989, U.S. Pat. No. 4,815,042, issued Mar. 21, 1989, U.S. Pat. No. 5,219,224, issued Jun. 15, 1993, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,340,211, issued Aug. 23, 1994, address the problem of delivering feed additives into animal feed rations in a feedlot accurately and on a customized basis at the time of feeding. Pratt U.S. Pat. No. 5,008,821, issued Apr. 16, 1991, addresses the problem of determining accurately the amount of feed ration to deliver to a particular pen of animals at each feeding. Pratt U.S. Pat. No. 5,315,505, issued May 24, 1994, addresses the problem of keeping track of drug inventories, drugs administered to particular animals, and animal health histories in a cattle feedlot, and determining what drugs or combinations thereof should be administered, and in what dosages, to a particular animal diagnosed with a specific illness.
While the foregoing patents address important aspects of cattle management in a feedlot, they do not address the broader aspect of how, when and how often to measure, sort, feed and treat animals in a feedlot, how long to feed them, and how and when to select them for shipment from the feedlot.
Hayes U.S. Pat. No. 4,745,472, issued May 17, 1988, and others, have proposed ways to accurately measure an animal""s external dimensions by scanning using video imaging techniques. Similarly, ultrasound backfat measurement of cattle is known, at least on an experimental basis, from the work of Professor John Brethour of Kansas State University""s Fort Hayes Experimental Station, as explained in an article entitled xe2x80x9cCattle Sorting Enters a New Agexe2x80x9d appearing at pages 1-5 and 8 of the September, 1994 issue of D. J. FEEDER MANAGEMENT. Professor Brethour has, on an experimental basis, used the data from such measurements to project an estimated optimum shipping or end date (OED) for the measured animals.
Also, various methods of sorting and weighing cattle have been known or proposed, as disclosed, for example, in Linseth U.S. Pat. No. 4,288,856, Hayes U.S. Pat. No. 4,617,876, and Ostermann U.S. Pat. No. 4,280,448.
Cattle Scanning Systems of Rapid City, S. Dak., markets a computerized video imaging and sorting system that includes weighing and scanning external dimensions of each animal, assigning a frame score and muscle score to the animal based on such dimensions, calculating a predicted optimal end weight and marketing date from the composite score and current weight data, and then sorting the animals for feeding according to their optimal marketing dates.
Recently, within the last year, the aforementioned Brethour has suggested using data from ultrasound backfat measurement of individual animals, 60-80 days into a feeding period, and a computer modeling program, to physically sort cattle into groups according to projected marketing dates as they are measured, apparently based on the ultrasound-generated data alone.
The aforementioned Hayes U.S. Pat. No. 4,617,876 discloses a computerized system for controlling, by weight, the movement and location of individual animals within one or multiple pens in a feedlot using a system of animal watering and weighing stalls and electronic ear tags to identify each animal. The weight of an animal as measured within the stall determines where the animal is routed within sections of a pen or among multiple pens. Although the Hayes ""876 patent suggests generally that criteria other than weight may be used to control the operation of a stall exit gate and other gates to route an animal to a desired location, it does not suggest how such other criteria could be efficiently obtained, or that such criteria can be used to determine an animal""s economic and physical performance and value, or to improve future feedlot management practices or future breeding and selection practices. Nor does it suggest that combinations of two or more criteria may be used to route an animal or determine its location within multiple pens or other areas.
The aforementioned Linseth patent discloses a computerized method of sorting animals in a feedlot according to weight gain. Each incoming animal is identified and weighed in a walk-through scale, and its identification and weight are recorded. At a later date each animal is reweighed in the walk-through scale and its weight gain is determined. From this determination, the animals are sorted into pens according to weight gain, and underperforming animals are culled from the group.
None of the foregoing methods or systems use more than two criteria for selecting, sorting or predicting an optimal marketing date. Also, none teaches or suggests a way in which such prior methods or systems might be integrated into a total system of cattle management for maximum economic return to the feedlot and the producer, and for optimum use of the accumulated data for each animal to determine production costs of each animal and to improve the genetics of future breeding stocks.
There is a need for such a total management system, and this need is addressed by the present invention.
Therefore, a primary objective of the present invention is to provide a system and method of cattle management in a feedlot that will produce the optimum economic return to the feedlot and producer for each animal in the feedlot.
Other objectives are to provide a method and system as aforesaid that:
(1) enables the accurate determination, tracking and projection of animal performance, feed consumption, health history, costs of feed, drugs, and handling, physical characteristics, optimal marketing date, carcass data and profit, on an individual animal basis;
(2) enables efficient and accurate measurement, movement, selection, sorting, and remeasurement and resorting if desired, of animals into groups for feeding, processing or marketing, based on individual animal factors other than ownership, type, date of arrival, or the like, for optimum feeding, treatment, handling and marketing efficiency;
(3) enables the accurate and efficient grouping of animals, and, if desired, regrouping of animals, in a feedlot according to similar projected shipping dates, similar physical characteristics, similar feed ration requirements, or any other desired factors or combinations thereof, without regard to ownership, arrival date, lot number, or the like; and
(4) enables the accurate and efficient accumulation, recording and correlation of historical data, feedlot performance data, and carcass data for each animal, and the transmission of such data (a) to the producer for use in the genetic selection and breeding of future animals for beef production, and (b) to the feedlot for improving the accuracy of performance, feed and marketing projections for future animals of similar characteristics in the feedlot;
(5) enables the accurate and efficient measurement, selection and tracking of individual animals and their respective physical, performance and carcass characteristics, and the correlation of those characteristics for improved slaughter date and production cost projections, for improved efficiency and value, and for use of such data to more accurately and efficiently breed, select and manage future animals;
(6) enables tracking each animal or group of animals from one location to another in a feedlot, even when mixed with other animals or groups, so that an accurate calculation and allocation of production costs by individual animal can be determined;
(7) enables the user quickly to review from a remote location an up-to-date cattle inventory by individual or group by location including health and performance status of individual animals after those animals have been sorted, remixed and retained and fed in a group, along with projected slaughter dates, production costs and animal growth status so that the user may use such data to make a decision on the proper date to ship a particular animal for slaughter;
(8) provides a high speed, gentle, multiple measurement, selection and sorting system for sorting of animals with diverse characteristics into uniform marketing groups based upon optimum slaughter date, or groups based upon uniform physical characteristics, or both, regardless of ownership, original lot number or other commonly used criteria for pen allocation; and
(9) allows the user to assign treatment, sorting and movement criteria, and other instructions for cattle management, electronically by cable or RF transmission directly from a remote location to the animal location for action that avoids the need for handwritten or printed messages, delays or loss of information.
(10) enables the accurate measurement, tracking and projection of the performance of individual animals so they may be selected for marketing at a time which will maximize the optimum economic performance of each animal.
(11) enables the accurate determination of individual animal projected marketing dates utilizing projected incremental production costs of individual animals compared to projected market value of such individual animals and using that data to select individuals or groups of animals for shipment for slaughter on a date that will maximize the economic performance of the individual or group.
To achieve these objectives, a process and system for recording, measuring, sorting and tracking individual animals includes a computer system for receiving, recording, and storing data by individual animal, and for calculating performance, marketing, sorting, costs and other information from such data by individual animal. Providing such data to the computer are automatic data entry means accessible at the various animal locations. The accuracy and integrity of the data is made possible by the use of electronic or other automatic identification devices on each animal, and by computerized reading of the automatic identification device and multiple measurements without the need for an operator visually to interpret measurements and enter them into a computer keyboard, thus eliminating human error.
To retrieve information or monitor animal performance and cost/value status, operators can remotely access the information with computer terminals, with RF signals such as RF transmitters and receivers, or via cables to other parts of the system.
To achieve these objectives, the invention includes an integrated measuring, sorting, performance monitoring, cost allocation and market selection system that measures and monitors various characteristics of individual animals multiple times or in multiple ways, for example:
A) by weight multiple times;
B) by external dimensions; or
C) by internal fat or other tissue characteristics (dimensions or texture).
It has been determined that previous management methods have not obtained enough individual animal data to (a) accurately measure performance, (b) project performance and slaughter dates accurately, (c) build an accurate historical database, and (d) quickly and accurately identify a sufficient number of physical characteristics to enable accurate calculation of performance and value. Also, prior methods and systems have been unable to measure, project and keep track of animal feed consumption and production costs accurately on an individual animal basis.
In a presently preferred embodiment, each animal arriving at a feedlot is directed through a one-way, single-file chute, where it is at least weighed, identified with an electronic ear tag, and processed such as by implantation of a growth promotant. It may also be scanned by video imaging to determine its external dimensions or measured for backfat using ultrasound, or both. All measurement and processing occurs within computer-controlled gated stalls within the single-file chute. The animals are then directed to feed pens for an initial feed period. During this initial period the animals may be grouped by ownership, weight, projected marketing date, any other criteria, or even randomly.
In any case, from the initial measurement and historical data available, a projected marketing date, projected average daily gain, and feed proration is calculated for each animal.
Sixty to ninety days into the feeding period, typically at reimplantation time, if required, selected groups of the animals having, for example, similar projected marketing dates, are moved again through the single-file chute, where they are reweighed, video-scanned for external dimensions, subjected to ultrasound for backfat measurement, and reprocessed (reimplanted) if necessary. From the new data and previous data, the average actual daily gain is calculated, and feed proration and projected marketing date are recalculated.
Based on the data, the computer system also sorts each animal into one of seven groups, including xe2x80x9cearliesxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9clatesxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9csorting group 1xe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9csorting group 2xe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cflex groupsxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9crerunsxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9ctrashxe2x80x9d. These groups are automatically directed into sorting pens, by group as they exit the single-file chute. The xe2x80x9ctrashxe2x80x9d group consists of underperforming animals that are removed from the feeding process. The xe2x80x9crerunsxe2x80x9d are animals whose measurements were not recorded and are sent back through the single-file chute for remeasuring and then sorted into one of the remaining groups. The xe2x80x9cflexxe2x80x9d group consists of animals that are in-between the group 1 and group 2 sort standards. They are sent back through the single-file chute identification and then resorted either into group 1 or group 2 to fill out the desired number of animals in those two groups. The resulting four groups are then moved from the sorting pens to respective feed pens. There they are fed and monitored, and finally selected for shipment to the packing plant, based on their performance, projected shipping dates and market conditions. While the animals are in their feed pens, their weight may be monitored using a portable or permanent identification and weighing system within or close to the pen. Selection for shipment may be on a group or individual basis, and may be done manually (visually) or by computer.
When an animal is shipped to the packing plant, its electronic ear tag goes with it so that the animal""s carcass data recorded at the packing plant can be correlated to the live animal and to its feedlot and historical data. The carcass data for each animal, including grading, cost and market value data, can then be transmitted to the feedlot, and to the producer for use by each, the producer in making breeding, selection or purchase decisions, and the feedlot in making management decisions and in allocating costs to the owner on an individual animal basis.